[Tutorial] How to start and maintain a blog for your e-commerce site

You already have extensive knowledge on the benefits of keeping a blog on your e-commerce site.

• You position on Google.
• You gain authority.
• You connect with your audience.
• You reinforce brand image. 

But when it comes to it, you don’t know where to get started with your blog.

And more importantly, how are you going to keep it active for years? It’s tough when you can only think of 3 or 4 topics…

If that’s the case, this post will come in very handy to get started once and for all, and not to run short of ideas.

So, let’s get to it! 😉

👉 How to start your blog (design your content strategy)

Content strategy consists in planning and publishing contents that are aligned with your business goals (whether that is to attract more qualified traffic, reinforce brand image, get leads, etc.).

But once you know your goals clearly, how can you find the right content in order to meet such goals?

Here are some guidelines.

✅ 1. Start brainstorming

A good way of getting started is to randomly brainstorm ideas from product-related topics.

Think, for example, of all those questions that your customers usually ask you (about what product is best, how to choose the right one according to its purpose, how to use it, etc.)

Those questions are a gold mine of potential topics.

Also, keep in mind that not all blog contents should be about your products. They should also address topics your clients might be interested in.

If you have a running shoes e-commerce, you can post about the importance of choosing the right shoes for running or offer tips for improving race efficiency, for example.  

Don’t worry if right now you can only think of few topics because at the end of this post you’ll find some content suggestions to keep on powering your blog for a long while. 😉

Right now, let’s see the next step.

✅ 2. Run a keyword analysis

Remember that one of the reasons why we create a blog is to attract organic traffic.

So, it’s important you write about topics people like to look up on Google.

In SEO terms, that means you must target a specific keyword with every post.

To find such keywords, there are tools such as Google Ads Keyword Planner. You just type in the ideas you had written down in the previous step and the tools will tell you which of them have monthly searches.

Also, it will provide you with other potential related topics you may have not considered.

However, remember to focus on informational keywords (the ones a user looks up when they want to know more about something instead of buying something).

In order to know if a keyword is informational or not, you only need to look it up on Google (remember to do this incognito so your search history does not affect the results) and see what kind of sites come up.

If these are mainly posts —not product cards or sales sites— then it’s informational.

✅ 3. Go with long tails

Keep in mind we want to write on the blog for a long time.

This is where long tails come in handy since they are more specific keywords and will therefore allow us to come up with more topics for our posts, and to position higher —since you probably don’t have enough authority to target words with many monthly searches yet. 

For example, if you own an essential oils store you don’t have to write a mega-post explaining everything there is to know about essential oils. It’s best to make more specific posts like: 

• The benefits of essential oils.
• Types of essential oils.
•  Essential oils that improve your immune system.
• Aromatherapy with essential oils.

That’s how we get four posts out of a single topic (as long as these long tails have searches). 😉

✅ 4. Create a publishing schedule

Once you have all of this, create an editorial calendar in which you include:

• Keyword: the keyword you’ll be targeting with each post. By doing this, you’ll avoid cannibalization (when two websites compete for the same keyword and in the end none of them positions).
• Post title: even if you change it later, it’ll be good to determine each post’s topic initially.
• Publication date: plan the date you’ll be publishing in advance. This will help you organize yourself and be consistent with your posts.
• Post objective: if the article has a more concrete objective, specify it. This will help you focus your post when you’re writing it out. The goal can be to attract traffic, create content for subscribers, solve FAQs, etc.

Is this not enough yet? Here’s a post for you to learn about how to create an editorial calendar. Check it out!

👉 How to start creating contents that attract traffic and allow you to keep on writing for years

It’s time to create those posts that will keep on powering our blog for a long time.

What do you need for the blog to achieve its purpose and for you not to give up on it?

✅ 1. Plunge into SEO writing

In order for your posts to position, the most important thing is for them to be useful for users. In addition, Google needs to be able to understand the topic you’re writing about. In other words, what keyword you want to position.

This is what SEO writing is about; it’s not simply dropping some keywords here and there in your text.

If you are still inexperienced in this topic, here’s our post on SEO writing for you to catch up.

✅ 2. Be organized

Writing when inspiration comes may sound bucolic and romantic, but in reality that hardly works. 

If you’re not organized for writing your posts in advance, you’ll end up having loads of accumulated work, your contents will lose quality due to rushing, and stress will ultimately make you quit your blog.

We recommend that you follow a system so that this doesn’t happen to you:

• Create a work routine: organize a schedule and don’t put off writing time for when inspiration comes visiting.
• Do outlines: design text outlines before you start writing. This will make writing easier for your post; you’ll know what to talk about and how.
• Write in advance: ideally, you should have some time margin (one or two days before publishing) to revise your texts thoroughly.

It seems such a small thing, but planning will make your life simpler and will help you in creating higher quality content.

✅ 3. Create different types of contents

It’s possible that after a while, you start running short of ideas when writing. 

Don’t panic.

Here are some examples of post types you can develop:

• Shopping guides
• Product comparisons
• Lists of “the best 10 products for X”
• Reviews by influencers
• How-to/tutorials
• News or developments related to your sector

Look for different approaches to your content and you’ll see how ideas start flowing back. 

➡️ Content curation

Another trick to get ideas is to check what other blogs that share your interests are writing about (in your language or any other your sector might be more evolved in).

The strategy of content curation consists in filtering all of the information available in order to extract quality content exclusively from it, and then use it as inspiration to write your posts.

If your competitors find it useful to post about certain topics, surely you will too. 😉

✅ 4. Listen to your audience

You’ll have customers reaching out with doubts about your products on a daily basis.

That too can be an infinite source of ideas.

If those doubts keep on coming back, you can make the best of it and solve them in a post. Even if there are no searches for a particular keyword, your customers are interested in that topic and, above all things, you are writing for them. 

Look at this example of an article from Adidas’ blog. It’s only from there that other interesting posts for the blog could come from.

Another way of listening to your audience would be asking them directly via surveys that you can design and send out to your subscription list.

Last, focus on the most searched products.

If there’s a specific product your audience searches constantly on your e-commerce, it means they are interested in it and you could write a review of that particular product.

But how can you know this?

With a smart search engine such as Doofinder that will spot the most searched products in your store. 

✅ 5. Some extra tips to write the perfect post

Finally, here are some basic writing tips so that your post draws attention from the beginning and invites the user to keep on reading:

• Introduction with a hook: create an introduction that captivates from the first line.
• Use simple language: avoid long sentences that hinder reading fluency.
• Address your buyer persona directly: Use an adequate and warm tone, and adapt it to your ideal client. If your audience is mainly women, use female nouns and pronouns to appeal to them.
• Give your text rhythm: use citations, enumerations, alternate shorter lines with longer ones and paragraphs of different lengths to make its reading more fun.
• Include headings with specific information: that’s how the reader will know at a glance what issues you’ll be addressing on the post (they also help SEO).
• Use bold fonts: they will help you highlight the most important sentences or words.

With these tips plus everything we’ve told you before, your blog will surely set trends.

👉 Now it’s your turn to get on with your e-commerce blog

You already know how to start a blog and especially how to make it sustainable so that it lasts many years without losing your motivation or running short of ideas.

You’ve got no excuse now. So, let inspiration come find you at work! 😉